Meditation/Consciousness

Meditation brings a sense of fullness and completion, and is the only permanent source of tranquility available to human beings. All other forms of serenity are temporary and dissolve into conflict and chaos over time. The euphoria of drugs quickly lead to misery and self-destruction. The wholesomeness of love, so beautiful and ethereal, is a relatively short lived and fleeting experience. As J. Krishnamurti said, meditation brings order and “That order is the order of the universe. It is irrevocable and doesn’t depend on anything.” Meditation is the eternal essence of nature taking on conscious form within the mortal human frame.

Meditation is an adventure of self-discovery. How can you live without knowing who or what you are? If someone asks you who you are during the day, you may state your name, as if a temporary label actually means something important. Ask yourself who you are when you are in deep sleep, unconscious, and without even a dream to prove that you exist. Ask yourself who you were ten months before you were born, and who you will be just one moment after your body dies. Meditation increases awareness of the natural phenomena that is actually going on behind your own eyes. Self-knowledge has intrinsic value, even without the indescribable bliss nature generously unleashes in those who practice meditation with sincerity and patience.

How You Can Unite Meditation, Divine Essence, And Personal Tenacity to Serve Your Highest Purpose

1. Meditation:

Meditation is a sacred practice. Shamans, gurus, priests, medicine men and other wise beings have practiced meditation for over 5000 years. In the 20th century, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi popularized one form of meditation he named Transcendental Meditation, (TM). This is a simple form of mantra meditation, easy to learn and to do.

We meditate by sitting quietly, eyes open, and concentrating on an image such as a mandala, or a candle, or sitting with closed eyes, and, in either case, repeating a mantra. A mantra is not a word. A mantra is a sound. Different sounds, repeated over and over and over again, affect energies within the body, each in its own way.

There are many ways to meditate. In most instances, you sit quietly. Teachers may recommend different postures. These include the lotus position in which the Buddha is often depicted. Diverse cultures recommend various deployments of the fingers. (one example: thumbs and forefingers lightly touching, palms up.)

When we meditate, we slow down our brain waves. We change them from the beta state, (22 cycles per second in normal waking consciousness) to the alpha state (11 cycles per second.)

This slower vibration opens up access to the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind, in turn, opens awareness of our otherwise inaccessible higher consciousness. To higher consciousness as well as to universal intelligence.

2. Divine Essence:

When a person’s intentions are pure, they surrender selflessly to their higher purpose in life. They surrender themselves in the service of the creator of us all. Diverse cultures variously call the creator God, some Allah, some the Great Spirit, some Our Heavenly Father, some use various other names, all meaning the supreme intelligence, the creator of the universe, of all that is.

In this state of surrender, a person is in touch with their divine essence. Having pure intentions, they are harmless. They are interested only in higher service.

On the other hand, some people who develop access to their higher powers, use their higher powers for selfish, negative and harmful intentions. (Darth Vader types.)

Your intuition may be trusted to inform you, to warn you of people with negative and evil designs. These people are to be resolutely avoided.

3. Bulldog Tenacity:

When we unite the practice of meditation with surrender to our divine essence, we are likely to be empathetic, loving, and harmless.

And if we are to advance ourselves in the relative world, the temporal world, the ordinary world of people, places, and events, a third quality is required.

This quality is bulldog tenacity. Do you know the nature of a bulldog? A bulldog is tenacious in defending its master and the master’s property. Their teeth lock onto the presumed invader. Their grip is an iron grip. That iron grip prevails even in death.

This means that when your intentions are noble and worthy, when the outcome of your intentions somehow contributes to making this a better world, you are to never, never, never give up.

You are to “pay any price, bear any burden” to bring your intentions into objective reality. This is the way to justify the space you take up and the resources you consume while you draw breath.

This is the way you make a positive difference in the lives you touch.

This is the way you make yourself a role model for others. And, most important of all, this is the way you leave a lasting legacy.

Without finding your center, there is no satisfaction possible. You can go on searching and you will find many things in life, but nothing is going to satisfy. Just a moment´s illusion when a desire is fulfilled. For a moment you feel good, but only for a moment. As one desire disappears, ten desires arise in its place. Again the whole turmoil starts, again the whole trip. And it is a non-ending process.

Only with finding your center does that process stop, that wheel moves no more. Coming home to your center, all desiring disappears – you are utterly satisfied, and forever. It is not a momentary satisfaction. It is contentment, absolute contentment. Coming home inside yourself satisfies, really satisfies.

Everything else in life is promises, but only false promises. The goods are never delivered. Money promises that if you have it you will be helped. But people go on becoming richer and richer and happiness never arrives. It is always there like the horizon – very elusive. Relationships give you the idea that everything will be good now and you will live in happiness forever, but it never happens.

Kundalini, an Italian Dish?
Definition: kundalini (k¢n´de-lê´nê) noun of Hindu origin. Physical and sexual energy that lies dormant at the base of the spine is activated through esoteric kundalini practice. This energy is directed through th…e kundalini channel in the etheric body upward to the top of the head.

Too Many Buddhas?
Listed randomly, here are a small fraction of the many Buddhas and Bodhisattvas we can look to for inspiration. Many Buddhas were never recognized, many names have been long forgotten, and many Buddhas are yet to be born. Should we narrowly fixate on just one beautiful but fallible Buddha, or should we instead be interested in the essential phenomena of enlightenment?

Reality is paradoxical; it contains all the polar opposites in it. Seen in the right perspective they are not thought to be opposites, they start looking like complementaries. Hence the paradox is only from a lower world of thinking.

When you yourself reach the peak of no-thought, there is no paradox; you suddenly see the unity of all opposites. In the ultimate the day and night meet and merge, life and death meet and merge, summer and winter meet and merge – there is no difference?.

It is very difficult to understand intellectually because intellectually they are opposites. Intellect cannot conceive that they can happen together. But that is intellect’s limitation.

When physicists for the first time discovered that the ultimate particle, the electron, which is the constituent of all matter, behaves very paradoxically, they were at a loss as to how to describe it.; it behaves as a particle and also as a wave simultaneously. A particle means simply a dot. A dot can’t be a line simultaneously. A line means many dots, a single dot is not a line. A wave is a line.

For many years there was great controversy about how to describe it, because it not fit ordinary logic. Then they have to listen to reality. What can you do? If reality’s behaving that mad way, we have to describe the way it is behaving, we have to put out logic aside; our logic can’t be that important.

Finally they have decided that it is both together. Since that day, physics has become quantum physics. Since that day scientists have begun talking like mystics. They had no choice, they had to! And now no great physicist say that mystics are paradoxical; now they themselves know that you cannot avoid paradox when you encounter reality.

Truth is your own experience, your own vision. Even if I have seen the truth and I tell you, the moment I tell you it will become a lie for you, not a truth. For me it was truth, for me it came through the eyes. It was my vision. For you, i…t will not be your vision, it will be a borrowed thing. It will be a belief, it will be knowledge–not knowing. And if you start believing in it, you will be believing a lie.

Let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.

– John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Science and Spirituality

Both science and spirituality are the search for truth. One is the search for the truths of the physical world; the other the search for the truth of the nature of consciousness. As such there is no conflict between them.

For the same reason, there is currently little meeting between the two either. The current scientifc paradigm does not include consciousness or mind as a fundamental reality, but seeks to explain everything in physical terms. Western science has now looked out to the edges of the Universe, back in time to the beginning of creation, and down into the sub-atomic structure of matter; and it finds no place, nor need, for God. But this is because it has not yet included the inner realm of mind in its scope. When science explores mind as fully as it has explored space, time and matter, it will create a new worldview„one that includes spirituality.

Spirituality, on the other hand, is often very unscientific in its approach to self-liberation. People believe things simply because someone has said it or written it. But this is hardly the best way to arrive at truth. The Buddha warned against this 2,500 years ago when he said “Do not believe anything because I have told you it is so. Only believe it when you have tested it for yourself.” In this respect spiritual growth can, and should, be very scientific. We can form a hypothesis — that certain meditation practices enhance awareness, for example — set up a personal experiment in meditation practice, and see what the results are. This is important not only to make sure that we do not deceive ourselves, but also to ensure that our spiritual progress is as rapid as possible. And rapid spiritual growth is something the world today needs very badly.

1. Don’t Identify with Your Thoughts/Feelings
“If you want to overthrow the mind’s domination, destroy all identifications with it. A thought arises inside you — don’t be one with it! You becoming one with it gives it strength; stand far away. Stand as if you are just standing by the roadside watching people pass by. Look at it as you would look at a cloud in the faraway skies while you stand on the earth below. Don’t identify. Don’t unite with your thoughts. Don’t say, ‘This is my thought.’ As soon as you say ‘my’, you are identified; as soon as you are identified with it, all your energy flows into that thought. It is this energy that makes a slave of you — and it is your own energy!

Don’t be identified. As you begin to stand apart from your thoughts, they begin to lose strength and become lifeless, for they get no energy.

2. Wait For the Gap
“When anger comes, stand away form it and observe. Let the anger arise; let it permeate your body. It will envelop you from all sides. Let it! You only have to remember one small fact — you are not your anger. Don’t be in too great a hurry to dive in, for then it will be difficult to come out of it.
Watch your anger, but be firm on one point: if you really must reply to the man who has insulted you, do so when the anger is gone. Under no circumstances reply before then.

“In the beginning this is going to be difficult, very difficult. You will have to be very alert and on your guard, but gradually it will become easy. The greater the distance you create between yourself and your thoughts, the more you establish your control: but you stand so close, so very close to your desires that you have even forgotten that there is any distance between them and you — that there is any gap between the two.

“Start today. The results will not come immediately, because your closeness, your association, has existed for countless births. Such old associations cannot be broken in a day; it will take time, but slight effort on your part will bear results, because this is a false identification.

“As long as your mind is your master, you will remain a slave. The moment you realize reality, natural freedom happens. Do not fight the mind. Fight, and the natural freedom will not result. If you fight you give the mind an equal status. You fight a person only when you consider him your equal. He was a friend before, now he is an enemy. The master is not an equal; the master is always above — in the skies, and the servant is always below — on the ground. When you are master you acquire the freedom that is natural, and this freedom is unique.

The human heart can go the length of God
Dark and cold we may be
But this is no winter now
The frozen misery of centuries
Cracks, breaks, begins to move
The thunder is the thunder of the floes,
The thaw, the flood, the upstart spring.
Thank God our time is now
When wrong comes up to meet us everywhere
Never to leave us ’til we take

The greatest stride of soul folk ever took
Affairs are now soul size
The enterprise is exploration into God
But where are you making for
It takes so many thousand years to wake
But will you wake, for pity’s sake.

Revolution is political, rebellion is spiritual; revolution needs a crowd, rebellion is individual. And all revolutions have failed without any exception, because the crowd is unconscious.
The crowd consists of the lowest intelligence. And how can anything come out of the lowest intelligence? Of course it takes revenge: it kills the czars and it kills the kings; it destroys property, it changes the government. But the people are absolutely unconscious; whatsoever they do is ultimately going to be a failure. The French Revolution failed, the Russian Revolution failed, the Chinese Revolution failed. All revolutions have failed.

And rebellion has always succeeded, but it is individual. A Jesus is a rebel, a Buddha is a rebel, a Lao Tzu is a rebel. We need more rebels in the world and less revolutionaries. I teach rebellion. Rebellion is beautiful, revolution is ugly. Revolution is violent, rebellion is nonviolent. Rebellion has nothing to do with the outside world at all, yet it transforms the outside world because once the inner is changed it starts triggering many things inthe outside world. But that is not our purpose; it happens as a by-product. Even if a single man changes, thousands are bound to change. Whosoever comes in contact with him is bound to be transformed in some way or other. A seed will fall into his being too.

So in a way I am preparing for a great revolution, but not through revolution – through rebellion and individual transformation.

Truth is not a belief, it is utter intelligence. It is a flare-up of the hidden sources of your life, it is an enlightening experience of your consciousness.
But you will have to give the right space for it to happen.
And the right space is accepting yourself as you are.

Learn silence. And at least with your friends, with your lovers, with your family, with your fellow travellors here, sit in silence sometimes. Don´t go on gossiping, don´t go on talking. Stop talking, and not only on the outside – stop the inner talk. Be in an interval. Just sit, doing nothing, just being presences to each other. And soon you will start finding a new way to communicate. And that is the right way.

Start communicating through silence sometimes. Holding the hand of your friend, sit silently. Just looking at the moon, feel the moon, and both feel it silently. And see, a communion happens – not only communication, but a communion. Your hearts start beating in the same rhythm. You start feeling the same space. You start feeling the same joy. You start overlapping each other´s being. That is communion. You have said without saying anything, and there will be no misunderstanding.

The whole structure of society is against the heart; it trains the head, it disciplines the head. It educates the head.

It neglects and ignores the heart because the heart is dangerous phenomenon. The head is a machine. Machines are never rebellious, they cannot be. They simply follow orders. Machines are good that way – they are obedient, hence the church, the state, the parents, everybody is interested in the head. It is convenient for all.

The heart creates inconvenience for the status quo, for established order, for the vested interest.

Head functions throught logic. It can be convinced. It can be convinced. It can be made Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, it can be made communist, facist, socialist. Anything can be done with the head. You just need a clever system of education, a cunning strategy. Exactly the same as we feed the computers, we feed the head. And whatsoever you feed the head it goes on repeating. It can’t make anything new, it is never original.

The heart lives throught love, and love can never be conditioned. It is essentially rebellion. One never knows where love will lead you. It is unpredictable, it is spontaneous, it never repeats the old, it always responds to the present moment. The heart lives in the present, the head lives in the past.; hence the head is always traditional, conventional, and the heart is always revolutionary, rebellious. But you can be victorious only through the heart, through love, not through logic.

And the miracle is that when rebel against the crowd psychology, and you become more and more independent, suddenly you start feeling that you are becoming one with the whole, with the universal.